GCF's support for coral reefs

Your excellencies, distinguished guests and colleagues, on behalf of the Green Climate Fund, it is an honor to be part of this initiative to address the Coral Reef Funding Gap.

Too little attention has been paid for too long to the impact of the climate crisis on coral reefs. They are one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate change on Earth. At 1.5 degrees C of warming, coral reefs will decline 70 to 90 percent. At 2 degrees C, they could become nonexistent. In turn coral reef loss and degradation will threaten the livelihoods and security of more than a billion people who depend on them.

Coral SIDS are particularly vulnerable to the destruction of coral reefs as they are disproportionally dependent on their ecosystem goods and services for their survival. However, coral reefs are also vital for the health of every single nation on Earth. Coral reefs and their associated ecosystems are essential to climate residence and stability. In terms of adaption to climate change, they protect people and property from extreme weather events through breaking as much as 97% of wave energy before waves reach the shore.

In terms of climate mitigation, coral reefs and associated ecosystems such as mangroves and sea grasses sequester and store more carbon per unit area than terrestrial forests. Even more important, most of this carbon is irrecoverable- in case of destruction, the carbon cannot be re-sequestered within 30 years on time to avoid catastrophic climate change. Given their high irrecoverable carbon density, all mangroves, marshes and sea grasses should also be considered global priorities for climate action.

The Green Climate Fund is rapidly increasing its investment in coastal and marine ecosystems protection. One example is our Blue Action Fund project, which is an ecosystem-based adaptation programme in the Western Indian Ocean. With a GCF grant financing of 34.1 million dollars, we will support climate-focused marine and coastal conservation projects across four countries.

However, we are witnessing a widening financing gap to protect and restore ecosystems worldwide, and this is particularly true for coral reefs. The growth in conservation and climate financing is not keeping pace with the rapid coral cover loss resulting from climate-induced ocean warming and acidification. The objective of the Global Fund for Coral Reefs is to address this funding gap by leveraging limited public funding to catalyze much larger private flows for coral reefs protection.

SIDS and LDCS have hardly benefitted from past blended finance efforts. The Global Fund for Coral Reefs aims to make bended finance work for the most vulnerable countries by bringing together an unprecedented coalition of global partners, from one the largest commercial bank in the world to member states, UN agencies, private foundations and civil society organizations at the forefront of the fight to protect coral reefs.

The Coral Reefs Fund will rely on a variety of public and private financing instruments, including grant, guarantees, concessional loans and equity to de-risk investment portfolio and encourage private investments in the blue economy and conservation projects. It can do this for vulnerable countries that would otherwise not have access to such private investment by bringing them together to diversify risk and address market constraints. The Fund will pilot innovative and scalable business models to reduce biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and conserve irrecoverable biomes.

The GCF works with a network of over 150 public and private, national and international organizations and can provide a range of grant and non-grant instruments to support transformative climate initiatives. We stand ready to engage with the Coral Reefs Fund’s coalition on how to best leverage GCF’s strategic capabilities to support this initiative.